Buel Original Spoon Bait

Buel Original Spoon Bait

Buel Original Spoon Bait

This Buel Original Spoon Bait article comes to us from a Hardware trade book Iron Age in 1893. What you will find interesting is that it gives us a date of 1834. In discussing this with a friend, and fellow lover of old metal lures he was aware of the story, but was unaware of any date having been associated. I had never read a date for the spoon dropping indecent either. It also gives more credence to the story of Buel dropping the spoon, vs a random piece of metal into the lake. Whatever date it may have been, Buel would not patent his first antique lure until 1852, even though he was in business selling lures in 1848.

ORIGINAL SPOON BAIT

The Original Spoon Bait to which we referred in a recent description of Buel’s new silver Spinner is shown in the accompanying cut. This was invented by Julio T Buel in 1834 and was made of an old brass table spoon which he polished on the convex side of the bowl after which a hook was soldered upon the small end and a line attached to the broken handle. This idea was suggested to him while eating lunch on the lake one day. He accidentally dropped a teaspoon overboard and as it sank he noticed that it made peculiar twists and turns through the water and that it was suddenly struck by a large fish before it reached the bottom. As the result of continued successes in making Baits the manufacture of these goods was begun by him at Whitehall NY in 1848 where the business is still carried on by the JT Buel Company. An exhibit of these goods has been sent to the World’s Fair the case containing the original Spoon Bait among their extensive line of goods.